


ghosts

by Waywarder



Series: Simply Having an Ineffable Christmastime [23]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: every love story is a ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21917782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waywarder/pseuds/Waywarder
Summary: In which Crowley takes a last look.Part of Drawlight's 31 Days of Ineffables holiday series!
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Simply Having an Ineffable Christmastime [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558789
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	ghosts

As Crowley wanders his flat for the last time, he is visited by phantoms. As he packs up the last few things that he will take with him to the bookshop (just until the cottage is ready; you all know the one), he considers his life before Aziraphale. 

Because, while we give Aziraphale most of the credit, Crowley is smart, too. And he knows… he knows that this love story (their love story) is being told now-- 6000 years after the first sentence was written-- because they are _ready._ They are ready together, and on their own terms. They are no longer haunted by the threat of what might happen to the other one if they are discovered.

And oh, they are wonderfully and joyfully discovered. They are drawing up maps of one another’s hearts, and planting grand, glorious flags to indicate: “Crowley’s heart. Aziraphale was here.”

(He lived here, in fact. He set up shop here, and _oh, fuck, everything I own is going to be tartan now, isn’t it,_ Crowley thinks, momentarily horrified.) 

_Let me draw up a map of your heart. With sea monsters and haunted islands and everything else. I will leave no end of your Earth unexplored. I will become the world’s foremost expert on the subject of You._

Bare walls, bare floors, cardboard boxes, air humming with ghosts. We sometimes say good-bye to one life to begin another. It is frightening. What if we’re wrong? What if we’re better off with the ghosts we were already afraid of? 

These ghosts of ours do not have power over us unless we give it to them. These ghosts do not inherently even mean us harm, I don’t think. We are each of us a tapestry of the spectres of our pasts, presents, and futures, and we are stronger and braver and smarter for them all. For when we fell (or even Fell) down, for when we were left bruised and broken, for when we didn’t get what we wanted.

(We got back up. We healed. One day, something amazing happened.)

(I promise.)

Something amazing has happened to Crowley. He loves, and is loved in return. But there was nothing wrong with him before that. He is not _completed_ by this love. He is not saved. No, he lives in tandem with it. He wakes up beside it every morning, its nose buried in a book. He makes it a second cup of tea before it realizes that it even wants one. He holds it by the hand, and strokes the wedding band upon its finger.

And Crowley is happy. He is found. He is seen. 

He is adored, actually.

Crowley smiles out into the empty flat, tipping a hat that isn’t there to the ghosts that are there, friendly and not so friendly alike. 

He closes the door behind him one last time, and goes boldly forward in the direction of a love story of which he is worthy. 

These old ghosts will leave him be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I hope you have a wonderful day!


End file.
